Sexuality,Family Planning and Religion in Papua New Guinea: Reproductive Governance and Catholicism in the Lihir Islands

This paper explores the complex and dynamic relationship between religion, sexuality and health in the particular context of the Lihir Islands in Papua New Guinea. Through the teachings of Catholicism in Lihir, a version of human sexuality and relationships is promoted that assumes lifelong monogamy, heterosexuality and restraint of sexual desire to ensure safe reproduction and sexuality. Techniques of governance shape reproductive practices in accord with this moral regime. This paper seeks to analyse how Lihirians manage the gap between this idealised model for human sexuality, and their everyday lives. I argue that while Catholicism shapes the moral regime, Lihirians exercise their moral agency, strategically responding to the particular circumstances of their lives in making reproductive decisions.     

Custom,Law and Ideology in Papua New Guinea

This paper seeks to illustrate some of the distinctive national features of the relationship between custom, law, and ideology in Papua New Guinea. While the concept of ‘native custom’ was initially the creation of Australian colonial law, the relationship between custom and law acquired a new complexion around the time of national independence in 1975, and the political use of the Tok Pisin words kastom and lo, both then and since, reveals that their relationship is not like that of the two things commonly known as ‘custom’ and ‘law’ in the English language or the political discourse of a country like England or Australia. Instead, their relationship has to be understood through an exploration of the metaphorical use of the Tok Pisin word rot (‘road’), which seems to stand for something midway between a ‘cult’ and an ‘ideology’, and through an understanding of the way in which the social relations of large-scale resource development have transformed the post-colonial political landscape.     

At Risk: The Relationship between Experiences of Child Sexual Abuse and Women's HIV Status in Papua New Guinea

Child sexual abuse in Papua New Guinea is a human rights issue as well as an indicator of HIV risk in women. This study aimed to develop knowledge about the link between violence experienced by women and their HIV status. The study used a mixed method approach to collect quantitative and qualitative data through structured interviews with a sample of 415 women across four provinces of Papua New Guinea: National Capital District, Western Highlands, Western, and Morobe. Participants were asked about violence they had experienced as children and in their adult relationships and the impact of the violence. The quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS, and qualitative data was coded using a thematic approach. Child sexual abuse was reported by 27.5% of the sample (n?=?114). Women reporting child sexual abuse were more likely to live in violent relationships, be HIV positive, and have a higher number of sexual partners.     

Mesede and the Limits of Reciprocity in Fieldwork at Kamusi,Western Province,Papua New Guinea

This paper outlines some of the ways I and my research were defined by Bamu speakers living at Kamusi, the headquarters of the Wawoi Guavi logging concession in the Western Province of PNG. These definitions often involved stories about Mesede and other great Bamu ancestors. The stories about Mesede outlined Bamu experiences of colonial and post-colonial development and suggested that Mesede had the power to transform the Bamu's current poverty and marginalisation. The possibility that Mesede could institute a new epoch of development was linked to the Bamu's ability to maintain inalienable ties with Mesede despite his removal overseas. Mesede's story also required me to acknowledge, and productively respond to, past appropriations by Australians, and others, of Mesede. His history placed me in a project of im/possible reciprocity that should have involved me in returning Mesede to his rightful place.     

Debating Appropriate Approaches to Violence in Lihir: The Challenges of Addressing Gender Violence in Papua New Guinea

Recent years have seen a proliferation of initiatives aimed at addressing gender violence both at the national and local levels in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Numerous studies in PNG have noted high levels of violence. This paper takes a range of initiatives in the Lihir Islands, New Ireland Province (NIP), as a case study to discuss the challenges of speaking about, creating policy and attempting to manage gender violence. In Lihir there have been marches against violence, business initiatives to combat violence, outreach programs to villages and training programs for individuals and groups. These changes occur locally within the national context of the establishment of the Family Protection Act in 2013 and the Family Violence and Sexual Action Committee in 2000. Despite the seeming groundswell against gender violence in Lihir, the plans and programs are often met with debate about the terms used, the value of programs or events and their appropriateness. Initiatives are critiqued as externally imposed, colonial or inappropriate for the local context which has implications for programs at both local and national levels.     

Sexuality,Morality and Lifestyle: The ABC of HIV Prevention Strategies in Rural Papua New Guinea

This article explores the national program for the prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea and its intersection with the experiences of a rural community in Western Province. The social marketing of HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention has seen an influx of categories and definitions of people, sexual behaviour and HIV/AIDS that have the potential to create confusion, but also spaces in which rural populations can understand and conceptualise AIDS. In the present paper, the preventative program is examined from the perspective of the Gogodala, whose understandings of sickness and prevention are based on an intimate and interactive relationship with the local environment. In this context, ‘lifestyle’ (ela gi) and the maintenance of certain ‘laws’ is the primary method of sickness prevention. I argue that an exploration of the local dynamic between sexuality, morality and lifestyle is vital to the evaluation of the impact of these awareness and prevention programs and the possibilities for future prevention strategies.     

Reshaping the Social: A Comparison of Fasu and Kubo-Febi Approaches to Incorporating Land Groups

In Papua New Guinea, local communities increasingly strive to render themselves ‘visible’ to the state as entities entitled to control and claim benefits from developments on their land. When people commit expressions of social form to paper they inevitably reshape previously operative social and political forms. This article compares ways in which two groups of Papua New Guineans have gone about the process of forming Incorporated Land Groups. Different histories of resource extraction, associated differences in engagement with state and companies and different pre-existing social forms are all reflected in the negotiations described. We discuss people's motivations for drawing up lists of members, the ways they went about this and implications for the communities themselves and for ILG registration more generally. Our analysis draws attention to how outcomes are shaped by scales of differentiation and emergent inequalities within the legal entities being imagined.     

Intersectionality in resource extraction: a case study of sexual violence at the Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea

This article uses the lens of intersectionality to analyze secondary data gathered by international human rights organizations investigating women’s experiences of sexual violence near Barrick Gold’s mine in the Porgera valley of Papua New Guinea. This case study provides an example of how an intersectional framework can be useful to feminist researchers exploring North–South power relationships in the context of resource extraction, by helping us ask nuanced questions about the benefits and costs of resource extraction in the Global South. In this article, intersectionality helps to trace the transnational relationships of power that shape women’s experiences of violence in Porgera, and Barrick Gold’s remediation policy for survivors. Intersectionality serves as a useful tool to map the systems of power at work in Porgera and to make visible the structural violence implicit in the relationship between Canada and Papua New Guinea created by Barrick Gold’s operation.     

Measuring the Efficiency of Health Services in Lower‐income Countries: The Case of Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea (PNG) faces enormous health challenges and information concerning how to allocate limited health resources efficiently is lacking. This article finds that geographical location is important in achieving higher efficiency scores. In addition, it compares efficiency scores against a range of quality indicators. The results demonstrate that different conclusions are reached when efficiency scores are assessed in the context of broader health system objectives. Analyses of this kind can provide valuable information to policy‐makers in lower‐income countries.     

At risk: the relationship between experiences of child sexual abuse and women's HIV status in Papua New Guinea

Child sexual abuse in Papua New Guinea is a human rights issue as well as an indicator of HIV risk in women. This study aimed to develop knowledge about the link between violence experienced by women and their HIV status. The study used a mixed method approach to collect quantitative and qualitative data through structured interviews with a sample of 415 women across four provinces of Papua New Guinea: National Capital District, Western Highlands, Western, and Morobe. Participants were asked about violence they had experienced as children and in their adult relationships and the impact of the violence. The quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS, and qualitative data was coded using a thematic approach. Child sexual abuse was reported by 27.5% of the sample (n?=?114). Women reporting child sexual abuse were more likely to live in violent relationships, be HIV positive, and have a higher number of sexual partners.     

Queering the Word: Patricia Nell Warren's Adaptation of Christian Sacraments in The Fancy Dancer

The essay explores the ways in which Patricia Nell Warren's The Fancy Dancer (1976) employs Roman Catholic sacraments to depict the developing sexuality of a young gay priest. The essay explores the parallels between sacramental spiritual development and the individual and communal markers of a burgeoning gay or lesbian identity. Additionally, the novel's connections between conversion narratives and coming-out narratives are examined. The essay argues that Warren, in using the rhetoric, symbols, and models of the Church differently, disrupts the narrow epistemology underlying Christianity. Finally, novels such as Warren's suggest that gay and lesbian authors can adapt elements of Christianity while undermining its oppressive presumptions, and establishing a liberatory rhetoric that maintains the intelligibility and recognizability of familiar Christian models.     

The role of primitive art on vernacular architecture: Its relevance on contemporary architecture in Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea is renowned for its colourful and delightful primitive objects of art. This paper offers an alternative explanation of the role of primitive art on vernacular architecture. To understand this role clearly, the meaning and the functions of primitive art are, first, defined. The role played by primitive art among the Papua New Guinean societies is then explained. Finally, the paper suggests the need for a conscious integration of this art into other aspects of development in Papua New Guinea; contemporary architectural works being one of them.     

Listening to the voices of children: understanding the human rights priorities of children with disability in Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea

In developing countries, children with disability lack basic services yet their voices are missing in the development agenda. This article reports on research to investigate the human rights needs and priorities of 89 children with disability aged 5–18 years in Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. An accessible and inclusive research method was developed to enable children with diverse disabilities to communicate their own views via visual, audio and tactile means. Data were analysed in relation to the Articles of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, identifying a wide range of priority areas including recreation, leisure and cultural life; employment; home and family life; and education. It is proposed that policy and programme responses must take a holistic view of children and their needs, affirming but thinking beyond the importance of education, to address the complexity of the systemic disadvantage faced by children with disability.     

Between cosmopolitanism and ethnic dissolution: Politics,religion and iconic reappropriation in the cult of the Mother of God of Bisila in Equatorial Guinea and Catalonia

ABSTRACT

The cult to the Mother of God of Bisila constitutes one of the main events in Bubi’s sacred calendar. The current representation of this traditional feminine spirit, partially identified to the Virgin Mary, stems from the sculpture made by the Modest Gené in 1968, when Equatorial Guinea was still a Spanish colony. The creation of this image formed part of a strategy of evangelization through religious syncretism. Yet, the importance of Bisila is not only religious but mainly political and identity-related: historically, Bisila has symbolised the cultural resistance of Bubi people. Today, the cult of Bisila is undergoing a deep transformation. In Guinea, we witness a strong contrast between the areas in which the cult tends to become an interethnic ceremony and those in which it preserves its marked Bubi character. In Catalonia, Bisila’s followers have strategically adopted a religious narrative based on the ideas of cosmopolitanism and pan-africanism aimed at presenting their cult as an integrative celebration. Based on a multi-situated ethnographic fieldwork, and on an in-depth historical research, this article discusses the tensions between universalism and ethnic singularity that lie within this unexplored cult, through which some of the main conflicts of contemporary Bubi community can be grasped.     

Confronting the Informal in Good Governance: The Case of Decentralised Education‐System Reform in Guinea

For twenty years, technocratic planning and management approaches have dominated good‐governance reforms in developing countries. This is true even for newer ‘participatory’ and ‘citizen‐driven’ reforms that still struggle to engage with powerful informal forces affecting public service delivery. This article presents evidence from a case study of decentralised education‐system reform in Guinea, revealing a wide range of influential dynamics outside the technical realm. These corroborate the argument for ‘good‐fit’ alternatives to traditional governance approaches and concrete measures to better capture the constructive and disable the destructive effects of informality on development.     

Medieval propaganda, longue durée and New History: Towards a nonlinear approach to the history of public relations

This article offers a new perspective on the historical approach to public relations by drawing from the work of French medievalist Jacques Le Goff, who was the principal representative of the Nouvelle Histoire (New History) French historiographical movement. Based on the notions of mentality and longue durée, which Le Goff inherited from the Annales movement, we propose that a nonlinear approach to the history of public relations will help to extend its time scale back to the beginnings of civilization. This seeks to overcome the historical boundaries usually established between the prehistory (or proto-history) and the history of public relations as a profession.     

Partnered fathers bringing up their mixed-/multi-race children: an exploratory comparison of racial projects in Britain and New Zealand

This article explores how fathers in couple relationships where their partner is from a different racial background understand bringing up their children. Drawing on a small-scale, in-depth comparison of fathers’ accounts in Britain and New Zealand, and using the analytic concept of racial projects, fathers’ activities towards and hopes for their children’s identity and affiliation are revealed as keyed into historically situated social and political forces. Particular national racial projects and histories of coloniser and colonised are (re)created and reflected in the various typifications (ideal orientations) informing the fathers’ racial projects. These might be concerned with mixed, single or transcendent senses of belonging, in individual or collective ways, each of which was in various forms of dialogue with race.     

Beyond bifurcation: Examining the conventions of organic agriculture in New Zealand

The last 10 years have witnessed numerous attempts to evaluate the merits of new theoretical approaches – ranging from Actor Network Theory to ‘post-structural’ Political Economy and inhabiting a ‘post-Political Economy’ theoretical space – to the explanation of global agricultural change. This article examines Convention Theory (CT) as one such alternative approach, assessing its potential in the context of ongoing change within commercial organic agriculture in New Zealand. More specifically, CT is used to expose the insufficiency of recent ideas of conventionalisation and bifurcation, both reflecting more traditional Political Economic approaches, as explanatory concepts for the emerging condition of the New Zealand organic sector. In this paper, the concept of worlds of justification as developed in CT is utilised to address the emerging complexity of organic production. While farmers supplying a more diversified domestic market can be distinguished from those supplying export markets, an exclusive focus on such distinctions ignores the influential role of extra-economic factors on the viability of organic production systems. Thus, in addition to what are classified as market and industrial worlds in CT, the paper addresses aspects of civic, green, domestic, inspired and renown worlds. Producers' selections of organic certification organisations are used to demonstrate the interaction of these worlds in the development of the organic sector in New Zealand. The article concludes with the imperative to move ‘beyond bifurcation’ and acknowledge the greater complexity of negotiated outcomes that might be achieved from a CT perspective than from existing political economy-derived models like conventionalisation and bifurcation.     

‘The status quo is not an option’: Community impacts of school closure in South Taranaki,New Zealand

This paper explores the impacts of proposed school closures on families in rural communities in the South Taranaki region of New Zealand. We situate this instance of educational restructuring in a critical policy context and present an account of its regional unfolding through drawing on local media coverage. We then interpret narratives gathered during an interview-based study of the proposed changes undertaken in 2003–2004. Our analysis highlights the impact of school closure for rural settlements in terms of affect as well as effects. More generally we reflect on the place of schools in the experience of place itself, as well as their contribution to social cohesion and the broadly defined health of a community.